


finally catching sight of the shore

by surgicalstainless



Series: tidal [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, Chuck Lives, Chuck needs some pants, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Raleigh has good ideas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surgicalstainless/pseuds/surgicalstainless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh Becket keeps bringing Chuck things. </p><p>Chuck doesn't know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	finally catching sight of the shore

 

  


Raleigh Becket fell in love with Chuck Hansen the first time he saw him laugh.

He'd deny it, even to himself, but Chuck had a smile that lit up the room, and his laugh... 

Raleigh closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him, and in the darkness behind his eyelids a tiny pilot light flickered into life.  _Yes_ , it whispered.  _I could love that man. I could listen to that sound all my life and never grow tired_.

 

***

 

Raleigh Becket kept bringing Chuck things. 

Chuck had no idea why. They hadn't been friends, not even close, before the Breach run, and then he was laid up in sickbay and Becket kept bringing him things.

It started a couple of days after the Breach. He was  _fine_ , really, but the sickbay staff kept muttering darkly about “concussion” and “dehydration” and “mild radiation poisoning” and “infection” and “traumatic stress,” and they got twitchy when he tried to get out of bed those few times. And his dad made that constipated-worried face whenever he brought Max to visit, and okay  _yes_  Chuck felt like shit, but he was sure he could just as effectively feel like shit in his own bed, in an old soft Ranger Academy t-shirt and his favourite tracksuit bottoms.

He had a lot of visitors, those first few days. Perks of helping save the world, he guessed, because not all of those people could be visiting because of Chuck's shining personality. Or maybe it was the fact that his dad was now everyone's boss. Almost everyone from Striker's crew came, in dribs and drabs, and Tendo, and some ladies from the cafeteria (always be nice to the ladies with the food). The K-Science bros stopped by and mostly just argued over his bed, which Chuck found oddly restful. Even Mako visited, though he couldn't meet her eyes. 

He wasn't the most stellar patient, Chuck knew that, and he was pretty sure most of his visitors would have stayed longer if he hadn't been such an arse. Then again, they weren't the ones stuck in a plastic-covered bed in sickbay wearing a gown that left their arse  _literally_  hanging in the breeze. 

And so Chuck was not entirely surprised to find himself glowering alone over his “dinner” of chicken-flavored clear broth and kaiju-blue gelatin dessert. The nurses had tried to pass this off with some excuse about “radiation poisoning” and “GI upset,” but from what Chuck knew about radiation, if his GI was upset —  _which it wasn't_  — he was fucked anyway and may as well eat what he wanted in the time he had left. The nurses made no truck with it, and abandoned him to his broth. Load of harpies, the lot of 'em.

Then Becket appeared, looking furtive and abashed and bemused all at once, and slapped a bowl of honest-to-god chocolate pudding onto his tray. Chuck gave him the best hairy eyeball he could manage through a mouthful of blue jelly, and together they enjoyed an extremely awkward silence. Becket opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again (“great fish impression, Becket,” he would have said, only — blue jelly), and then tapped the lid of the pudding bowl twice, as if he'd come to some decision. 

“I'm really glad you made it back, man,” he said, and then strode out of the door as if he'd just realized he was late for a meeting with the Queen.

Well, maybe he was. They were getting an awful lot of public attention, these days. Weird. Becket was a weirdo, Chuck decided, and tucked into his illicit pudding.

***

A few days later, and Chuck would have been grateful for some uncomfortable visits from bickering K-Science bros or jaeger techs whose names he couldn't remember. Sickbay was  _boring_  when all you'd got was a magical sunburn and a full-body headache. Everybody had a job to do but him, it seemed, and he couldn't turn on the TV without seeing Pentecost's photo, or Becket and Mori answering the same questions over and over, or his dad all polished up and serious for the Commission. Chuck was bored out of his gourd, and he still wasn't wearing pants.

He'd just thrown the remote across the room in disgust (again), when Raleigh Becket Savior of Humanity Hero of the Hour Himself walked in the door, in the flesh. Chuck might have opened his mouth to say all that (and how strange was it to see the great smug bastard on TV and then have him walk  _right through the door_  seconds later), but his brain was derailed by the fact that Becket was clutching a brown paper bag. 

In Chuck's experience, only a few things came in brown paper bags: chiefly, booze and porn. He couldn't hazard a guess which this bag might have held (and either would be weird, coming from Becket), but he wouldn't sneeze at either right now. So he just sat there with his mouth hanging open while Becket waltzed right in and slapped the bag down on his bedside tray like it had offended him.

Wow, whatever it was was heavy. That must be a  _lot_  of porn.

Not porn, as it turned out. Comic books. “I thought you might be bored,” Becket explained, and he knew a guy who knew a guy, so here was the entire run of  _Y: the Last Man_  and a few random issues of  _Deadpool_  to keep him from terrorizing the nurses too badly. And what do you know, that might not be a horrible idea. Chuck got so absorbed flipping through the first few pages of Volume 1 that he failed to notice they were having another one of those awkward silences. 

Becket cleared his throat. “I always got really bored whenever I was stuck in Medical, anyway. I liked having graphic novels to read. They're not too heavy, you know?” 

“What?” Chuck startled, already absorbed. Woah, all the men in the world just  _died_? And of course Becket would call them “graphic novels.” Ponce. “Oh, yeah, thanks, man. And for the pudding, too. Pretty decent of you —”

But Becket was already retreating, hands stuffed in pockets and ants in his pants, if his pace was anything to go by. Weirdo.

***

The nurses were keeping him in sickbay out of sheer bloody-mindedness, Chuck decided. It had to be hurting them more than it hurt him, by now. His magic nuclear sunburn was starting to peel, and it _itched_  like crazy, and he still had no pants, and he could go to the toilet without an audience, okay?!? But they refused to release him. Maybe his dad was paying them to keep him hostage and out of trouble. 

That was a pretty fair bet, actually. After all, Chuck couldn't say something stupid to a journalist if he was confined to a hospital bed in a backless gown. (He had a brief mental image of something off-the-shoulder, in teal satin.  _Fuck_ , but he was bored.) So he sat, and scratched, and flicked idly through the adventures of the Merc with a Mouth and HYDRA Bob, and then the door opened.

Becket. Becket with yet another paper bag. Chuck perked up, then tried not to show it. Booze, porn or comic books? You beauty, Becket. And the company wasn't bad, if you liked awkward silences. It beat no company at all, at any rate.

This bag was soft, not heavy, and Becket looked even more sheepish than usual. With a suspicious frown, Chuck dumped the contents onto his ever-present bedside tray, and —

“Clothes? You brought me...  _my_  clothes?” Because there was his old Academy shirt with the hole at the collar, and his favourite pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms, the very clothes he'd been fantasizing about for pantsless  _days_  now. And... “Hand cream? What the hell, Becket?”

Becket went a little bit red. Ha, nice to know gingers weren't the only one cursed with that particular tell. “Well,” he offered, “you've been stuck in that hospital gown for days now. I thought you'd feel better in real clothes, and Herc said these were your favorite. And your sunburn looked itchy and this lotion always helped my chilblains, working on the Wall. It's really strong, a little goes a long way.”

He blurted it out in a rush, and Chuck thought it was the longest speech he'd ever heard Becket make. He might have made some good points, too. Hand cream probably  _would_  help with the itching. “Little goes a long way, huh? Like me, then,” and flashed Becket a shit-eating grin. He couldn't help it, really he couldn't. And blow me down if Becket didn't go even redder still.

That made Chuck feel a little guilty, because he was grateful, honestly he was, and by this point Becket was his most frequent visitor besides his dad (and Max). So Chuck found himself addressing Becket's retreating back (seriously, what was with this guy and running away? Was he secretly French?): “Hey, hold up, man. Just gimme a minute to get changed, okay? You can hang around. You know, if you want. If you don't have anywhere you have to be.”

Smooth, Hansen. He might have been a little bit red himself by then. But Becket turned around, and sat in the Visitor's Chair of Torment, and tried not to look too surprised or uncomfortable (it didn't work). Chuck ducked into the bathroom, and thank god this would be his last time doing that supremely graceful back-to-the-wall sideways shuffle. Not that he was modest or anything, you really couldn't be modest and a Ranger, but, well, he figured Becket hadn't done anything to deserve seeing Chuck's arse. He was trying to be polite, here. 

One  _hallelujah pants!_  moment later, and then he and Becket were attempting to have a proper conversation. It... wasn't horrible. Nobody punched anybody else, for starters. They talked about comic books (“graphic novels,” excuse him), and the best colours for jelly (“jell-o,” because Yanks always have to be different about everything), and the awful press junkets he'd been missing out on, and what Chuck would do when he finally got out of sickbay (“Medical,” and that used to be wearing pants, but now he thought he might like to go outside for a while, get some fresh air with Max).

“Mako's been walking Max a lot, while you've been gone,” Becket said in answer to that, and he looked — worried, sad, frustrated. He had a good face for it, Chuck reflected. Like a giant blonde puppy dog.

“How she doing? She coping okay?” In all that time in sickbay, Chuck had been trying not to dwell on the fact that she'd lost her father, that Chuck had lived when he should have died with his copilot, like a proper Ranger. With Becket sitting there, that thought made a little less sense than it did all alone in the middle of the night, but — Mako was his oldest friend, and he hoped she could forgive him.

Becket shook his head. “She's not great. I mean, I haven't known her all that long, but...”

He trailed off. The rest didn't really need to be said. When you Drift with someone, time doesn't matter like it used to. Chuck had known Mako since they were kids, and Becket had only known her two weeks, but if he said she was hurting... Well, he'd know. 

“She doesn't talk much. Well, even less. She takes Max on a  _lot_  of walks. And, I don't know that she's sleeping. I try to get her to spar, but she's just humoring me. I'm pretty sure she lets me win.”

Becket gave a tiny, wry smile with that last bit, and Chuck scoffed a little, because if Becket beat Mori in the kwoon, it was  _definitely_  because she'd thrown the match. Hell, she kicked his arse on the regular, whenever they were in the same 'Dome, and  _he_  wasn't a washed-up has-been like somebody he could mention.

Or maybe he was, now. The Breach was closed, so what use were Rangers?

“Well, shit, man. I'd love to help, but I'm probably the last person she wants to see right this moment.”

Becket looked puzzled at that (he had a good face for “puzzled,” too. Chuck had a momentary mental image of Labrador Retriever Becket tilting his head and cocking one ear).

“You know, cause of getting her dad killed.” He'd have thought that part was obvious, but apparently not. Geez, Becket could be thick sometimes.

Becket looked like he wanted to argue, but settled for an awkward silence instead. Chuck, for his part, settled for fiddling with the cuff of his tracksuit pants. He figured they'd effectively killed the conversation, and was just wondering if he could get away with pretending to fall asleep to get Becket to leave, when the guy started talking again.

“There aren't that many of us left, you know. Just a handful of Rangers, and no jaegers left at all. You father has a new job to do, but the rest of us... What use are we? We're going to need each other, Chuck. We need to help each other.”

Becket was speaking quietly, and he had the grace to be staring at the floor while he gave his little inspirational speech, so he missed the tiny jolt of surprise that went through Chuck at the sound of his first name. Before Chuck could even begin to think of a reply, Becket was out of his chair and headed for the door. He muttered something about finding him copies of  _Transmetropolitan_ , and something about a spider, and then he was gone.

The sickbay was eerily quiet outside Chuck's door, and his stupid empty room suddenly seemed airless and enclosing, the rest of the world far away. Chuck Hansen had absolutely nothing to do but think. 

Fuck.

***

The very next day Becket was back. Chuck had spent the morning in an invigorating argument with the nurses about how he was  _better_ , damn it, and he'd been  _fine_  to start with, and nobody ever needed to be kept hospitalized for a sunburn, even one that was peeling off his face in strips and made him look a bit like he had leprosy. He'd felt confident about today, armored as he was with actual pants, and he'd actually secured a promise that they'd consider letting him go. Chuck was pretty sure that was the kind of “maybe” your mum gave you when she really meant “no, but I don't want to argue with you any more,” but at least it was progress.

If worse came to worst, he guessed, he could always escape, now that he had real clothes on. Nobody would try to tackle a man with leprosy. He might be contagious.

But come lunchtime, Chuck still hadn't made a break for it, and there was Raleigh Becket. No brown paper bag, but he was carrying a lunch tray, and he was kind of using it to herd Mako Mori into Chuck's room, as if he was afraid she'd do a runner too. Not that Chuck would blame her. He still couldn't meet her eyes, and from the look he snuck while she was settling into her chair, she couldn't meet his either.

She looked thin, and pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked —  _smaller_ , somehow, lighter, without the steadfast bulk of Pentecost lending her ballast. For all he wanted to, Chuck couldn't look away, and Mako caught him looking. (Of course she did, Mako noticed everything.) She gave him a tiny, tired smile, the kind that was meant to be reassuring.

It was and it wasn't, because Chuck knew that smile. It was the smile he'd forced for well-meaning adults after Scissure, after his mum... It was the kind of smile that was meant to make the other person feel better and stop asking you how you're doing. On the other hand, she'd smiled it at _him_ , and that was a whole lot better than a gob of spit in his eye, which was about what he'd been expecting. Chuck risked his own tiny smile back, and then they both had to stare at their lunch trays for a while before the moment got too meaningful. 

Becket's lunch tray, Chuck was interested to note, contained two servings of chocolate pudding, and a weird-looking pack of cards. 

“Phase 10,” Becket explained, gesturing to the cards. “You ever played?”

Chuck settled for shaking his head, lest something smart come out of his mouth (“nah mate, I was a bit busy fighting Kaiju to play stupid card games”) and he not get any pudding. 

This must have been the right choice, because Becket did indeed hand over a pudding cup, and began shuffling the colorful double deck. The rules sounded easy enough, and if there were awkward silences during the hands they could all pretend they were busy concentrating on their cards. Becket did have some pretty good ideas, Chuck admitted to himself (if only in the privacy of his own head).

Funnily enough, though, there weren't any silences. Mako had always been good at setting people at ease, and even this new quiet and drawn Mako somehow made it easier to talk. Becket caught Chuck up on all the Shatterdome news, who was going where now that the war was over, and who was staying because they didn't have anywhere else to go. He heard some fantastical story about how the K-Science bros Drifted with a dying kaiju fetus (come on, _seriously?_ ), and about the “Hooray The World Isn't Ending” parties he'd missed while he was floating around in his escape pod in the middle of the Pacific. Becket hadn't been there long enough to give the full run-down of “Not The End Of The World” hookups, but Mako helped him with names, and they all had a bit of a giggle at the drunken Cherno Alpha tech who'd tried to seduce a very bewildered Dr Gottlieb. 

Chuck, for his part, did his best to entertain with unflattering caricatures of his jailers/nurses, and gross skin-peeling stories. He told Becket about the first time Mako kicked his arse in the kwoon, to make Becket feel better about losing all the time. (And at cards, too. Mako was quiet, but maybe that was because she was too busy winning to talk.) He'd been fifteen, a newly-minted Ranger and so sure he was hot shit, and this little nobody girl had just wiped the mat with him. “And I couldn't help but fall in love with her,” he finished, with a wink. Christ, it felt almost normal.

“Then, as now, you are easy to read, Mister Hansen,” Mako informed him gravely. Chuck let her “read” his one-finger salute in reply, and Becket dealt the next hand of cards.

Much to all their surprise, Mako retaliated with an embarrassing boy-Chuck story of her own. The other two got so engrossed in the tale (it involved a girl, and some excruciating stuttering, and his dad, and his drivesuit boots filled with shaving cream, and he denies any such thing ever happened, he has blocked it from his memory) that Chuck managed to acquire a winning hand without either of them noticing. The look on their faces when he slapped the cards down, interrupting Mako mid-humiliating punchline — Becket's look of total shock, Mako's scoff of disgust — something bubbled up inside, and Chuck began to laugh.

It felt good, to laugh, so Chuck threw his head back and just let himself go. He hadn't laughed like this in — oh, in years, maybe not since K-Day. The world wasn't ending. He wasn't a soldier any more. He was young, and whole, and all of a sudden he had a future. He was surrounded by friends, and he was going to be okay.  _They_  were going to be okay.

He opened his eyes to catch the answering smiles on the faces of his friends, and there was something flickering behind Raleigh's eyes he could have sworn looked like revelation.

 

Yeah, Chuck Hansen was going to be  _fine_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Y: The Last Man" is a graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. In it, a global catastrophe kills every male mammal on earth, with the exception of one man and his pet monkey. It's about isolation, and teamwork, and rebuilding after a loss. It's also a really good adventure story.
> 
> "Transmetropolitan" is a graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. It follows the adventures of crusading journalist Spider Jerusalem and his "filthy assistants" as they wage war on a corrupt government and a blighted urban dystopia. It's about doing what you believe to be right, against a monolithic enemy, and at great personal cost. It's also pretty funny.
> 
> "Deadpool" is an antihero from the Marvel comics universe. He's generally held to be a comic figure, though his brash humor is a front for a lot of self-loathing. Chuck is reading issues from the Daniel Way run, because the Posehn/Duggan/Moore run came to an abrupt end in August 2013 with Trespasser's arrival, and, well, because that's all Raleigh could find. Chuck's interior monologue reminds me of Deadpool a little bit. Only, less crazy.
> 
>  
> 
> And you guys, this is my first work of fiction, of any kind, ever. So if you wanna leave comments, tell me what you liked or didn't like, I'll be appropriately grateful :-)
> 
> You are also heartily encouraged to come visit me on [tumblr](http://z-delenda-est.tumblr.com). I have no idea what I'm doing, but more friends are always better. And I really like prompts.


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